Archive of Our Own

Lena is not exactly what people would call chatty. The best she can do is about three minutes of small talk at the Luthors’ famous holiday parties- yes, she was still in high school, no, she hadn’t picked a college yet, science, no sports teams, see you next year. It’s easy. And if it started to drag on too long Lex would appear out of nowhere- they had an agreement about things like that.

So when she had actually talked to someone first, that one time, it was significant.

Usually, Lena would never have gone across the street to talk to the girl who was staring out at the road from her perch on the garden wall. The family had moved in Friday night and now it was Sunday morning and Lena was not quite sure why she found herself crossing the street towards her.

Lena wouldn’t have talked to her but there were pretty people in the world and then there were heart stoppingly pretty people and this was one of them. There was also Lex, who’d smirked at her and shoved her out the front door when he’d seen Lena sitting by the windows that looked out at the white house down the block. There was also her mother, who was bound to find something to yell at Lena for, and she really didn’t feel like dealing with that at the moment.

Really, though, it was mostly Lex. She did have to give the asshole some credit because he was the reason she spoke to Kara Danvers first, and he was the reason they had some semblance of… well, something.

Kara had looked up from her garden wall with a bit of a surprised expression on her face and wow, she was somehow even more perfect in person. Which didn’t really seem realistic, or fair, for that matter.

“Hi,” she’d said, “hi, do you live around here?”

Lena had found it difficult to reply without mumbling. “Um, yeah, I’m Lena. I live up there.” At this she’d pointed vaguely up the road, watched the girl squint.

“The gray one? Wow, it’s huge.”

“Um, yeah. That’s me.”

“Well, I’m Kara. I just moved in, do you go to school here too?”

“Midvale, yeah. I’m a sophomore.”

Kara’s face had lit up at this (it had been a little like staring into the sun, and Lena hadn’t wanted to look away). “I’ll be a sophomore too! We definitely need to hang out, if you’re in my classes, and-,” here, Lena had probably looked a bit stunned, and Kara had almost seemed to deflate, “well, I mean. Only if you want to, of course.”

-
And now a year has gone by and Lena has come to a few startling realizations.

Firstly, Kara was, of course, beloved by everyone basically the moment she’d stepped inside Midvale High.

Second, because of this, Lena has to decline her offers to hang out, because she really can’t have Kara be pulled down with her.

Third, Kara had a smile that makes Lena’s hands ache and makes it really hard for her to draw a full breath, and so,

Fourth, Lena is completely in love with her and it’s getting really, really complicated.

Lena had absolutely no idea what to do.

-

It comes in rushing waves, falling pieces, curls winding themselves up her skin and stealing her breath. Lena can’t attribute her feelings to one particular instance, it was more the feeling of knowing Kara Danvers and understanding her. However, she guessed that if she had to pick a start to the chaos of the year it would’ve started in around September.

Lena and Kara share one class that year, because evidently the universe hates her and wants to see her suffer. It was an American History class, which is mildly annoying because she wishes it had been math; Kara has such a cute concentration face and the tiny smile she kept next to her when she got the answers right was just… it makes Lena’s stomach wrench a little bit.

But of course it was History, and it was on a Thursday in late September that the teacher finally loses his cool from the energy of left-over summer and decides that he will be assigning seats, and the desks will be put into pairs for an upcoming project.

And because the universe hates her, she would apparently need to be seated directly next to the sun personified indefinitely.

Kara had a way of adopting people, she drew together the strays and created her own little circle. Her friend group seemed to be a quilt of tragic backstories- James Olsen, who Kara had taken in after his father’s death caused him to spend long amounts of time staring out at the football field aimlessly. There was Nia Nal, who was only a freshman but had started transitioning at the start of the year, and Kara had adopted her when a sophomore boy tried to follow her into the bathroom (Kara had stared him down and Lena had watched from a distance, astounded). There was Winn, whose background had something to do with his father and a criminal, and a few others that Lena had trouble keeping track of. It wasn’t like she was paying attention all of the time.

That wasn’t to say, though, that Kara wasn’t adored by everyone. Having a small inner circle didn’t stop the rest of the grade- the school, even- from being drawn towards her.

So Lena isn’t overly surprised when Mike Matthews interrupts the seating assignments. Mike is new this year, but that hasn’t stopped him from finding his place almost instantly as a douchebag. He was notorious for being kicked out of class and for beer pong. Lena has always considered beer pong to be mildly ridiculous, anyway- why not just drink? Why did anyone need to deal with cups and balls and Mike?

Lena did not particularly like this kid, but most everyone else did. And he liked Kara, which was not ideal. The whole situation was not ideal, to say the least.

“Mr. Jones?” he calls out, winking at Kara, who was gathering her things and preparing to move to Lena’s desk and oh no, she was not going to be okay.

The teacher pauses, turns slowly to regard Mike with a tired expression on his face. “Yes, Matthews?”

“Is there any way that Kara could sit over here? I mean, we’ve already planned half our project and I really just think she’d be more comfortable. No offense, Luthor.”

Lena feels him eyeing her, but she turns ahead and bites her lip. It would’ve been a bit difficult, she knew, sitting next to Kara for a project and then for a deskmate. She was not known for being the most stable and casual when coping with her feelings. Still, though… she couldn’t say it wouldn’t have been nice.

“Is that true, Danvers? You and Mr. Matthews have a project planned?” Mr. Jones is frowning down at his seating chart, trying to reconfigure and Lena feels a wave of gloom wash over her. She is going to be stuck with fucking Leslie Willis, and she is going to be doing all the work for the rest of the year. It had been nice while it lasted.

But then Kara’s voice rings out clearly across the room. “That’s okay, Mr. Jones. I’ll stick with Lena.”

That’s when Lena knew she was in trouble, because hearing Kara say her name makes her chest tighten just a bit and she gazes up to see Kara glancing over at her tentatively.

“Kara!” she hears Mike hiss, but Mr. Jones looks back up from his chart. “Are you sure, Ms. Danvers?”

“Yeah, I’m good where I am,” Kara responds and she sends a brilliant smile Lena’s way and if Lena’s heart stopped beating in that moment, who could blame her?

The project ends up being about a chosen battle from the Revolutionary War, or so Lena thinks. It’s pretty hard to concentrate when Kara fucking Danvers is sitting, like, a foot away from her and Lena can feel her eyes on her.

When they break to start work, Kara starts to talk almost immediately.

“Hey, I’m sorry if that was weird before, when I said I wanted to work with you? And I’m sorry about Mike, he can be kind of rude sometimes, I don’t think he realizes it. But I am excited, if that’s not weird, I don’t know…” she slows down, looking at Lena unsurely.

“No, it- it wasn’t weird. I don’t think Mike likes me, to be honest.”

“What?” Kara exclaims (a bit loudly, Lena has to admit). “No, he does. He just didn’t realize he came off as rude.”

“Okay,” Lena responds for lack of a better thing to say. She knows her voice has gone a little quiet, wills herself to look back up and meet Kara’s eyes and god.

“I have to confess,” Kara says, eyebrows rising, “I’m not very good at History. It’s actually my worst class, so-,”

“So you want me to do the project for both of us?” Lena replies. She can’t help but be a little disappointed.

“What? No! Do people-,” Kara scrunches her nose. “Do people actually ask you to do that for them?”

Lena glances back at her. “Well, yeah. I mean, don’t people ask you for your homework and stuff?”

“Yeah, but… why would anybody make you do a whole group project on your own?”

Lena almost blushes, she feels Kara’s indignation like a weight. “I don’t know. I guess they know I’ll do it. I’m not the best with confrontation.”

She busies herself with rooting through her pencil case, and she thinks she feels Kara’s eyes on her for a beat. When she looks up, however, Kara’s busy pulling a sheet of paper from her notebook and writing their names on top.

“Well,” she adds, still filling out the sheet, “I’m not going to make you do it all by yourself. No, I was just saying you’ll have to help me a little. History is not my strong suit.”

“I know what you mean. I’m hopeless when it comes to Spanish.”

“I kind of doubt that, Lena.”

“What?” Lena makes a face, and Kara giggles. She giggles.

“I don’t know, I mean,” she busies herself with the paper and pen once again, “Like, you’re so smart, I just sort of don’t believe that you’d be hopeless at, well, anything, really.”

Lena doesn’t know how to respond to that, and she’s saved by Kara’s head snapping back up. “Okay, what battle are we doing?”

“Um. Lexington and Concord, maybe?”

“Sure.” Lena watches Kara fill in the title in delicate handwriting before setting her pen down and leaning back expectantly. “Okay. Which one was that again?”

Lena can’t help laughing. “The first battle of the war? 1775? No?”

Kara shakes her head. “Yeah, I have no recollection.”

Before Lena can respond there is a scratching of chairs on the waxed floor. The bell is ringing and Kara is shuffling her papers together. “When do you want to work on this, Lena?”

“Maybe study hall or something? Or I guess we could call, if you’re busy then…” Kara’s face had fallen a bit when she’d mentioned study hall, and Lena struggled to think of times.

“Or… well, it’s due Monday, right? Why don’t you just come over to my house tomorrow night and we can work on it then?”

Lena could swear that the breath has left her body. “Come… over.”

“Yeah, you could stay for dinner if you want to, and then we could just finish it up before the weekend! Unless you have plans,” Kara says, apparently taking Lena’s hesitancy as a declination.

“What? No, no that sounds perfect.”

Any panic at the request is diminished immediately because Kara is beaming at her and Lena’s not quite sure how anyone could be so perfect. “Come over by six,” she’s basically chirping, “Eliza’s usually making dinner around then, so you can meet her and Jeremiah.”

“O-okay,” Lena stumbles over her words, trying to process the idea.

“Oh, and Lena?”

“Yeah?”

“You should have lunch with me and my friends sometime. I kept trying to invite you last year and you never took me up on the offer.”

And then she’s gone, and Lena’s about to be late for biology but she can’t stop staring at the door where Kara’s golden hair passed through a moment before.

She’s so screwed.

--

By five thirty that Friday, Lena is freaking out. She’s finally decided on a black turtleneck with ripped jeans and her docs- she can’t go completely rogue and make Kara think she’s turned into a whole new person just to meet her parents. However, several problems still arise and Lena has to talk to her brother.

Lex is lying on his bed with a pack of gummy worms open next to him. Lena tries to slip her hand into the bag and Lex slaps it away.

“Can I have one, Lex?”

“No. What do you want?”

“Is Mom home?”

“I don’t think so. Don’t think she will be until late.”

“So who’s making dinner? Not you, right?”

“No, I think Libby’s making chicken of some sort. The day Mom stops leaving her children in the care of maids will be the day we both die.”

“Great. I won’t be joining you.”

“Lena! Don’t tell me you actually have plans.”

“I do, though.”

“What, a date? I thought that you kicking Max Lord for his pestering would have sent out a message.”

“Firstly, he asked me four times after I said no, so that’s on him. And second, no, it’s not a date, I’m having dinner with the Danverses.”

Lex shot up. “What? Lena!”

“Is that a good ‘what’ or a bad one?”

“Good! Because to my knowledge, you have a bit of a thing for Danvers the younger.”

“Lex!”

“Am I wrong?”

“Why do you say it like that, that’s so creepy. Just say Kara, we both know Alex is away at college.”

“And we miss her every day,” Lex said, mock wistfully.

“Didn’t she once curse you out in the hallway?”

“She did, yes. It was a misunderstanding, she meant it for a friend of mine, let bygones be bygones.”

“Well, fine. Can you braid my hair?”

“When will you learn to do it yourself?” Lex grumbled, but he rolled over anyway and adjusted Lena so her hair fell back onto the bed.

“Never, as long as you can just do it for me.”

“French?”

“Obviously.”

“Hold still, you know I can’t do it properly when you’re all fidgety.”

“If you gave me a gummy worm I wouldn’t be moving.”

“That’s bribery.”

“And you’re a saint, are you?”

“Basically.”

They sit in silence while Lex finishes the braid and tops it off with a bright pink hair tie. “There you go. The outfit needed a pop of color.”

“Hey!”

“Not to be rude. You look great! It’s also...” he lowers his voice comically, “so that Kara knows you’re gay.”

Lena goes pink and stands abruptly. “Okay, Lex.”

“What? It’s like a bat signal!”

“It’s just pink.”

“Yeah, pink, like… girls…”

“You are an idiot.”

“Is Kara gay?”

“No!”

“Aw, really? You sure?”

“I think she likes Mike Matthews.”

“He’s a douche.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, she could be bi, though, couldn’t she? You’re so heteronormative, for a lesbian.”

“She isn’t.”

“And how do you know that?” Lex smirks.

“Goodbye, Lex!” Lena says loudly, slamming his door before taking a breath.

It was five fifty, she needed to get over to Kara’s house, and she felt like her stomach was about to explode.

Fuck.

It’s a quick walk to Kara’s door- she’s only a moment up the street, anyway- and she can see lights on in the little white house. There’s a soft glow coming from all the windows downstairs, and Lena watches as another light switches off on the second floor. Before she knows it, she’s in front of the garden path.

She doesn’t remember the last time she’s been a part of a family dinner. Lex certainly wasn’t cold, but Lillian couldn’t be described as much else. Thanksgiving dinners were quiet and awkward, Christmas filled with benefactors and CEOs. She and Lex had been eating together since they were kids, and Lena really doesn’t know the last time that her mother sat down with them on an ordinary night.

She takes a few calming breaths. Kara is being friendly, and Lena needs to get ahold of herself. Kara is sweet and kind and she’d invited Lena over for dinner and for the project. This was not the time for butterflies.

In that moment, the porch light flickers on and the front door swings open and Kara is bathed in a yellowish glow. All pep talks and promises flee Lena’s mind instantly, scurrying back to the gutters of her thoughts because Kara smiles at her and she looks ethereal.

“Hi Lena! Come in, Eliza’s almost done cooking and I think Jeremiah should be home any minute.” She turns to walk back indoors, but not before softening her smile and gesturing inside.

“Hi,” she murmurs a moment too late, following Kara indoors and cursing herself for being swept away so quickly.

“You can just throw your coat on the couch there if you want, we don’t mind. I’ll go tell Eliza you’re here!”

Lena is looking in on a cozy family room- cozy really is the best way to describe it, specifically because it’s the polar opposite of the Luthor home. The walls are littered with photographs of Kara and Alex, and there are pillows and blankets in little heaps along the couch. Plants fill the window seats and the lighting is warm and it’s so nice.

“Eliza, this is Lena Luthor,” she hears Kara announcing, and she turns around to see Kara a few feet away with a smiling woman by her side.
“Hi, Lena, it’s so good to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you from Kara!”

She has?

Kara shoots Eliza a look and Eliza laughs slightly.

“Hi, Mrs. Danvers, it’s good to meet you too. You have a really lovely home.”

“Oh, call me Eliza. And thank you, I was under the impression it was a bit of a mess!”

Lena looks around again and smiles. “It’s lovely.”

“Well, come on in! I’m making a pork teriyaki, I hope that’s okay.”

“It sounds great.”

“That’ll be ready in about half an hour. Kara, why don’t you take Lena upstairs?” Eliza says, raising an eyebrow at Kara slowly.

It might be her imagination, but she thinks Kara goes a little pink (Lena definitely does). Before she can really process the moment, Kara is taking her by the hand and leading her towards the staircase and Lena can almost feel shocks up through her hand and arm.

“Sorry about that,” Kara says, still a bit pink and it’s intoxicating, “she likes to embarrass me. I mean, not that you embarrass me, because you don’t, it’s just something she does all the time- I mean, the first time that Winn came over she wouldn’t stop talking about when I was a baby and-,” she cuts herself off. “Sorry.”

Lena laughs softly. “It’s fine, Kara. She seems great.”

Kara looks back again as though she’s considering her, but it stops quickly and she smiles brightly. “Yeah, she is. Oh, and here’s my room!”

The door swings open and she’s standing in a bedroom with yellow walls. There is a wide window in one corner and a chair in the other- stuffed animals are piled high on it, and a blanket covers most of them with the exception of the few still peeking out of the edges. Lena does a slow spin and notices a wall covered completely. She wanders over to it.

There are pictures coating the yellow paint- Winn, James, Nia, and some other people she vaguely recognized as Lucy Lane and a sophomore named Barney, or something of the sort. There were also a bunch of Kara with a freakishly long, gangly boy who grinned enough that it seemed that his face should have split by now. Then there was a corner of Alex- Alex and Kara at a rollercoaster, and in a pool, and crying in front of a large dorm building. It was adorable, and the only thing that made it better was Kara littered across it- Kara holding up peace signs, Kara grinning while James attempted to lift her onto his back, Kara and Nia in a photo booth somewhere, Kara in a long black dress that made Lena’s eyes widen.

“I know it’s kind of a mess,” she hears Kara say, and she turns around to see her standing nervously in the middle of the room.

“It’s cute,” Lena assures her, gazing at a large photo of a galaxy.

“Thank you.”

Kara seems to notice Lena’s interest in the stars because she gestures vaguely towards the frame. “I really like space, I guess. I used to stargaze a lot with my parents, before they… before they died.”

Lena looks up at her through the corners of her eyes and Kara smiles a bit sadly. “Jeremiah and Eliza got me this when I moved in- I was scared, barely twelve, you know? And they made me feel so at home. And then we moved here last year and we had it framed and put up. Just because.”

She can feel Kara eyeing her, and she swallows. “My mother used to take me swimming all the time- my biological mother. Not… not the Luthors. And we would go to the seashore and she’d pack sandwiches and juice boxes and she would swim out as far as she could while I would go to the tidepools. I’d pick up the periwinkles and stick them back on the rocks, so their shells wouldn’t be crushed.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was.”

She feels Kara look back at her and she can feel the words coming back up, about how one day her mother had swam out in the middle of a lake and she hadn’t come back and the fog had rolled in and Lena was alone at the shore with sticky juice straws and sympathetic eyes. She pushes them down.

Instead she turns to Kara and smiles slightly. “Why do you keep your stuffed animals all covered up?”

Kara looks surprised momentarily, but then she smirks back. “I don’t need people thinking I’m too wild.”

Lena laughs despite herself, and then Kara bounds over to her bed and turns on pink fairy lights and Lena gestures out her window.

“Look, you can see my window from here!”

Kara is at her side quickly, squinting. Her nose is scrunched up and there is a crinkle in the middle of her forehead and it’s so ridiculously cute that Lena is filled with the urge to grab her face and kiss what she can reach. Instead, she points vaguely down the hill. “There,” she says, angling her finger.

Kara is still squinting, and so Lena takes her by the arm. She moves Kara’s hand until it’s pointing at her window at the top of the dark gray house. “See? Right there.”

Kara nods slowly and smiles, and Lena realizes she has one arm draped across Kara’s shoulders and the other around her forearm, with her face angled right next to Kara’s. She pulls away hastily.

Kara spins back. “I bet I could see you from here, honestly.”

Lena feels her eyes widen slightly, and there’s a brief moment where she stands still, staring at Kara, who is looking back at her.

“Girls! Dinner!”

Kara blinks, smiling at Lena. “We should go.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. Let’s go back down.” She hates herself for how awkward she feels, but Kara Danvers was looking at her for, like, three full seconds and she feels her stomach turn.

Jeremiah is just as friendly as Eliza, and dinner is delicious, and this family is so unfailingly nice that it takes Lena by surprise. At the Luthor parties she’s talked to for purposes of small talk, but Kara and her family seem genuinely interested.

“So Lena, what do you like to do in school?”

Before she can respond, Kara interrupts. “Lena’s basically a science genius.”

Lena fights a smile. “I am not, she’s exaggerating.”

“That isn’t true. She built all these tech entries for that state science fair for our school’s rep, and she won it.”

“That is pretty impressive, Lena,” Eliza smiles at her, “what were they focused on?”

Lena remembers a vague mention that both Eliza and Jeremiah are scientists, which holds true because after her initial explanation they press her for details and both seem truly interested. She gets so wrapped up in explaining her design- one that she’d been particularly proud of, but one that her mother had, of course, critiqued to its core- that she forgets how much she’s talking, and finally fades out self consciously. She feels Kara smile brightly at her from behind a mouthful of pork, and she tilts her head. “See? I told you she was a genius.”
-
They finish eating, and then Kara and Lena work until eight, when they’ve put the finishing touches on their project and Kara flops herself backwards on her bed so that her hair grazes the ground.

“Flip over, Lena, the room looks better like this.”

So she does, and Kara giggles next to her as she flips her braid backwards and lets it hang down next to Kara’s blonde waves.

“Your family is really sweet,” Lena says offhandedly, watching Kara nod resolutely.

“Yeah, they are. They’re supportive and everything, too. I’m glad I have them, even though… you know.”

“You miss your parents.”

“Yeah.”

“So do I, sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

There’s silence for a minute, then-, “How did you get so good at history?”

Lena laughs abruptly. “I’m really not.”

“Shut up, you are.”

“I don’t know. Lex was always talking my ear off about some battle or another, it got stuck in my head. Lex is my brother,” she clarifies quickly.

“Yeah, I know Lex. Alex cursed him out once last year.”

“Oh, I know. He deserved it, too, he can be a bit of an idiot. But he is a really good brother. He’s always taken care of me.”

“He’s a senior, right?”

Lena groans. “Yeah. He’ll be gone next year, and then I really don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t stand my mother without a Lex blockade.”

“Wow. Well, yeah, I miss Alex too, like, all the time, and I don’t even use her as a… as a blockade.”

“He’s distracting and annoying, yeah, but… well, I don’t know. I’ll miss having someone to eat dinner with, you know? It gets a little lonely.”

“You’ll eat dinner alone?” Kara sounds incredulous.

“I’ll be fine, Kara, don’t worry.”

“Will you tutor me?” Kara blurts out quickly, turning a bit red. “I mean- well, in history, I guess, I just can’t get a handle on it and it’s the class that I’m actually doing badly in and, well. It’s totally fine if you can’t, or if you don’t want to or something-,”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Kara sits up, swinging her hair behind her and Lena does the same. Kara grins across at her. “You’re not as much of a lone wolf as I thought, Luthor.”

That sentence alone would have been enough to send Lena to an untimely grave (she’d called her Luthor), but Kara has jumped off the bed and headed towards the door. “Come here, I’ll walk you home.”

Lena has no real choice but to follow.

The walk is short, but Kara fills it with chatter about her friends when she seems to sense Lena isn’t going to start talking.

“Okay so you know Nia, obviously, and she’s a freshman. And then there’s this guy who sits with us most of the time, his name is Barney, and he has a huge crush on her. I swear I’m not being creepy, he actually told me directly- he doesn’t have much of a filter, that’s what makes him so lovable! But anyway, I’m so sure Nia likes him too but she keeps denying it. She’s all uninterested in dating and stuff, but I see the way she looks at him, and I keep trying to set them up. Winn is totally into it too- I mean, he would be, he’s a hopeless romantic, he’s always getting involved in people’s love lives. He was dating this girl from another school, which isn’t a line because I actually met her, but now he’s just trying to set all of us up, including me, which is why…” here she pauses, then launches back in with her usual gusto, “which is why he keeps trying to get me to talk to Mike. I’m sorry, I’m rambling.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Lena smiles. It’s actually kind of nice. The air is cold and she can hear crickets from all around her, and the woods are black at this hour, but she can see under the faint glow of old street lamps and Kara kind of glows in the moonlight. Kara is always kind of glowing.

They stop in front of Lena’s house.

“I’ll text you about tutoring. I still have your number from that day you came to say hi when we first moved in- you know, you were actually the first person I talked to in Midvale?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Alex always really admired you for it. Also I think she admired you because of the whole science thing, which is only slightly my scene, I really prefer-,”

“Math,” Lena finishes, realizing her mistake as she cuts Kara off. That was awkward.

But Kara doesn’t seem to think so, because she smiles happily. “Yeah.”

Lena stands still for a second, and then jumps as Lex throws her front door open behind her.

“Lena, Mom’s back.”

“She’s back? I thought you said she wouldn’t be back until late.”

“Is eight… twelve… not late?”

“You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”

“Okay, I agree, and I’m sorry, but I told her you were just in your room studying for a big test tomorrow and if you sneak back in right now she won’t see you come back through. So say goodbye to your little friend. Hi,” Lex says slowly to Kara, who raises a hand while bunching up her mouth (Lena is sure it’s so that no one can see her smile).

“Okay, Lex, go away.”

“No, I’m doing this for you.”

“Bye,” Kara says, “I don’t want you to get in trouble. Go.”

So Lena does, sprinting up the stairs while Lex talks loudly to muffle the sound, and once she’s back inside she looks around her bedroom. She kind of has the urge to paint her walls yellow.

On this thought she carries herself to her window, pulling up the curtains and considering. From this angle she can see the pink lights still on in Kara’s room, and she smiles over at them before looking for the remote for her own LEDs (Lex had bought them for her after much wheedling for her birthday the last year). She presses the buttons and sets the lights to a blue- a light blue, almost the color of the sea if the sea was richer. It’s deep, though, and Lena can feel herself falling into it. She lets herself drop onto her bed.

Suddenly a faint glow shifts and Lena picks her head up again curiously. In the distance, she watches as the pink lighting of Kara’s room switches to a light green before flashing once, then laying still.

Lena smiles.

--

High school is nothing like the movies. There aren’t tables of jocks and nerds and stoners so much as there are random assortments of people smashed across the cafetiera. For this reason, Lena likes to eat in the library.

Lena’s not unpopular, technically. It isn’t like she gets pushed in the halls or called names or any bullying shit. It’s more that she keeps to herself and everyone else does the same. At a certain point she even encourages it because the less people that try to talk to her, the less people she has to talk to. Lena is not a fan of talking to large groups of people.

No, she’s not traditionally unpopular in the same way that Kara isn’t traditionally popular. Kara doesn’t flounce down the halls or have her number written across her forearm or attend every party there is to hear about. She’s popular because Lena cannot think of a single person in the school who dislikes her, as much as they might try to. The cynical kids and the pessimists might try, but Kara has to be the most popular girl in school because she’s ridiculously nice and she’s basically sunshine.

Lena is also not alone in being in love with the dorky ball of sun.

While Kara sits in the cafeteria surrounded by her little chosen family, Lena sits in the library with hers.

Sam Arias is pretty dumb for someone who is simoultaneously the smartest in the school. Lena’s never seen such a clean average, and she’s also never seen someone fit more mozzarella sticks in her mouth. She’s loud and she’s sarcastic and she fights Lena’s battles for her, and what else does anyone really need in a friend?

Lena and Sam had come out to each other freshman year. They’d been watching Clueless when Sam had announced very loudly that she wanted to marry Cher Horowitz. Lena had agreed. Sam had then clarified that this was because she was a lesbian. Lena had agreed again. Then they’d collapsed in a crying heap on Sam’s bed until her mother came up to tell Lena it was time to go.

As gay best friends they joked often about the fact that neither of them had had real romantic feelings for the other. “We dodged a bullet there, Luthor, because you’d be a bit of a nightmare!”

They ate in the corner of the library every day, which technically was not allowed but Cat Grant, who was formidable to literally everyone else in the school, had a bizarre soft spot for Lena.

They come in through a back entrance the following Friday and Sam snuck to their usual spot behind the stacks while Lena walks towards the librarian’s desk.

“Hi, Ms. Grant.”

“Lena, you need to tell Ms. Arias that I can always see her sneaking behind the shelves there and since I have never kicked her out, it’s completely unnecessary.”

“I have told her that, Ms. Grant.”

“And yet she’s scurrying amongst the stacks.”

“I think she likes the drama.”

“Yes, well. You two are welcome back there, as usual, but again, as usual-,”

“We won’t tell a soul.”

“Alright, go along then.”

Lena heads back towards the crime section, which is where Sam likes to eat because, as she said, technically what they’re doing is a crime and she needs to shelve the topics properly.

“Ms. Grant says that you need to stop scampering through the shelves, Arias.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said you liked the drama.”

“Lena! No wonder she doesn’t like me.”

“I think she does, actually, but you wouldn’t know because you never talk to her in the first place.”

“Why would I? She scares the shit out of me.”

“Case in point.”

“Fine. Hey, do you want to go hang out in the park later? I need to get a coffee and the man who owns the cart over there loves me. He started giving me two donuts with every cup.”

“And you don’t give me one?”

“No, I do not. So can you?”

“I can’t, I’m tutoring someone.”

“Wait, that’s right. You’re tutoring Kara Danvers.”

“Would you keep it down?”

“No, I will not, because you’ve been in love with her for a year.”

“We’re just friends. I mean, barely friends, because we hung out once. Once, Sam.”

“Once, which included going to her house, meeting her parents, hanging out in her room, and having her walk you home? That sounds like a date to me.”

“Okay, it was not, firstly, and second, you are such a drama queen.”

“Maybe I am, but at least I’m not the one pining like you are.”

Lena scoffs.

“Damn, I gotta get to class,” Sam responds, biting her lip as she rises to her feet. “But hey, Lena? I want details.”

“You are ridiculous.”

--

They meet at Lena’s house that day, primarily because Kara has been begging her to see her room since last week and secondarily because Lena’s mother will be at a conference all weekend. Lex assures her this is true, and Lena is forced to believe him when she sees a suitcase in the entry hall. After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day (which she texts him, and to which she received an abundance of middle finger emojis).

Kara accompanies Lena home from school, which Lena had been doubtful about. If Lena was Kara, she’d told her, she wouldn’t want to be seen walking home with Lena.

Kara had told her that what she was saying sounded like something a raving lunatic would say, and that she wanted to walk with Lena. “We’re friends, after all,” Kara had said.

“We are?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Lena had smiled a bit too much at that, because she’d forgotten to be embarrassed. Kara had that effect on people.

So now they were in Lena’s front room and Kara was pulling her shoes off while staring around her, gaping. Lena blushes.

“I know it’s a bit much…”

“I didn’t say anything. I think it’s kind of nice.”

“I don’t, honestly, it’s a bit too minimalist. But I appreciate it.”

Kara nods.

“Come here, my room’s upstairs,” Lena adds, gesturing towards the second level.

“Can I get a tour?”

“Some other time, we’ve got a rodent sneaking about. Lex!” she clarifies hastily at Kara’s horrified expression.

Kara bursts out laughing and it’s so, so cute and Lena wants to lose herself in it. If Kara’s voice could make waves, her laugh was like a riptide but Lena couldn’t bring herself to care about being swept away.

Lena’s door is painted black, which was a poorly made decision left over from eighth grade but also one that still manages to piss her mother off, and so Lena has not repainted it. She guides Kara inside a bit nervously.

“Oh my god, Lena. I love your room.”

Lena’s room is just painted white, but she is a fan herself. She has two floor to ceiling bookshelves and band posters across the wall. She doesn’t have a wall of friends like Kara does, but a single polaroid of her and Sam is taped carefully to the back of Lena’s door and she really wouldn’t have it any other way. Kara seems to notice it too and pauses her darting around the room to observe it.

“This is Sam Arias with you, right?”

“Yeah, it is. She’s my best friend.”

“She’s so nice, I totally get it. She sat next to me in chem last year. Lena, you look so pretty here. Wow.”

Lena feels blood rush to her face, but Kara is already moving on across the room.

“You have a TV in your bedroom! Lena!”
-
They do study for over an hour, but this is abandoned as Kara lingers over to her DVD collections and pulls out a movie excitedly. “The Incredibles is the greatest movie of all time.”

“You think so?” Lena replies, rolling over on her bedspread across a delicately drawn map of the thirteen colonies.

“It’s just a fact. Alex and I once dressed up as them for Halloween- well, she was Violet and I was Dash, and it didn’t really work because we didn’t have a baby to be Jack Jack and Eliza and Jeremiah were, like, weirdly opposed to being the parents? Don’t ask me why. But I thought it was a great costume.”

Lena can’t help smiling as Kara rambles, turning the movie over excitedly to read the credits on the box. Oh, what the hell.

“Hey, Kara. Do you want to watch it?”

After Lena has snuck into Lex’s room and stolen the rest of his gummy worms, they stretch out across Lena’s bed and play the movie. Kara cries- she actually cries- when Violet and Dash join the fight. “They were so brave,” she laughs through her tears, and Lena gives her an incredulous look, but she’s smiling.

Kara hides her face on Lena’s shoulder when Syndrome captures the Incredibles and shrieks excitedly when Frozone tears his apartment up for his super suit. It is quite possibly the cutest thing Lena’s ever seen, and she isn’t sure she can ever watch this movie again without Kara’s commentary. Hell, she isn’t sure she can ever watch any movie again without it. Without her.

Of course their movie night is ruined when Lex bursts in, and then Kara has to gather her homework together and leave. Before she does, though, she turns back to Lena.

“Can you see my window from yours?”

“Yeah, I can,” says Lena.

“We should talk to each other, with the lights!”

“Well… I don’t know morse code,” Lena replies slowly.

“What? Lena, have you met me? Obviously I don’t either. I’ll just blink it at you! You’ll know what I’m saying.”

“Oh, um… okay. Bye, Kara.”

Kara freezes for a second before stepping forward in one bound and hugging Lena tighter than she can remember being hugged before. Maybe ever, she isn’t sure.

“Bye, Lena.”

And then she’s gone and the only token of the night is the haphazard blinking that comes from Kara’s window a few minutes later. Lena can’t help but laugh.

“You’ve really got it bad for this girl, huh?” Lex asks, leaning in through her door frame.

Lena considers a snarky reply but stops, looks up at him instead. “Yeah,” she replies, “yeah, I really do.”

--

The weeks go on and October starts to die. Lena tutors Kara every Friday, but then that time becomes allotted for movies and talking so they expand into Tuesday’s study halls as well. Every week Kara is excited about something else. Kara’s name starts to blow up Lena’s phone with pictures of pretty rocks or cute dogs. Every week, Kara stops her heart with a smile. Every week, Lena falls in love.

Halloween falls on a Saturday that year, which is great for the parties and doesn’t matter much to Lena. That Wednesday, however, Sam and Lena get an unexpected visitor while sitting down for lunch.

It’s only about two minutes into the period when Lena hears what sounds like a complete collapse somewhere in the library. Chairs falling, books tumbling, shelves swaying level of collapse.

“Ms. Grant is not going to be happy with that,” Lena remarks softly and Sam giggles.

She hears a yell as predicted, but then something surprising happens. Ms. Grant lowers her voice. Lena shushes Sam, who has been talking excitedly about chaos and property destruction.

“Ms. Danvers, you might want to be more careful,” Ms. Grant says, but quietly. Somehow.

Then it’s Kara’s voice ringing out. “Oh, I know, and I’m so sorry! I was just looking for someone. Also, Ms. Grant? I read your blog post over the weekend about Little Women, and… well, wow,” she’s replying, and Lena can almost see Kara’s excitement through the layers of books.

“Kara, you do know that technically it’s a bit of a conflict of interest if you follow my blog, correct?”

“Oh, I don’t follow it. I read all the posts, but I didn't follow, I didn’t want to cause a problem. But anyway your whole commentary on Jo March was amazing. I mean, I read it when I was about nine, but I never thought she was queer. And now I need to reread it.”

“Thank you for the flattery.”

“Well, I mean, it’s such an interesting representation.”

Lena almost chokes. Representation?

“Kara, who were you looking for? I don’t generally let students eat in my library…”

“Oh, Lena? Lena Luthor, and Sam would probably be with her, I’m sure. Sam Arias.”

Lena chokes again and pushes herself away from her hearing position. Sam is laughing at her.

A moment later, Kara is standing in front of the crime shelf.

“Hey, Lena! Hey, Sam!”

“Hey, Kara!” Sam answers jovially, smirking across at Lena who has gone pink. She’s never heard a straight girl gush about the representation Jo March provides. She’s only ever heard herself do that, to Lex, who had subsequently locked her out of her own bedroom.

“Hey, um… I’m always inviting Lena to come have lunch with us, and she never takes me up on it, so I was wondering if maybe you could come today? The whole group isn’t here, it’s just Winn and James and Nia because of some big Spanish midterm. But Sam, you can totally come! If you want?” She breaks off, sounding a bit nervous.

Sam looks across at Lena with raised eyebrows pointedly. Lena knows she shouldn’t say yes, she knows she’s in too deep, but…

“Yeah, of course, Kara.”

… but she can’t say no to Kara anymore. Which doesn’t really bother her as much as it maybe should.

“Great!” Kara brightens. “Here, pass me your bag, I can get it.”

Lena can see Sam rolling her eyes in her peripheral vision and she slaps her lightly across the arm. They follow Kara across to the cafeteria while she talks about James’ older sister, and Sam leans over to whisper in Lena’s ear.

“I’m pretty sure you got your answer.”

“What answer?”

“To the whole question, you know. Is she straight. The answer is no, because I’ve never seen a straight girl talk about fucking Jo March.”

“Maybe I have.”

“I did that. And then I came out.”

Lena speeds up to walk next to Kara, mainly to avoid Sam’s smirking in the background.
-
Kara’s friends are nice, and Lena had kind of been hoping they weren’t. Just so she didn’t get sucked in.

James is a senior and Nia a freshman, but Winn is also a junior and he and Kara seem particularly close. Whenever they mention each other they do a little side hug and face scrunch, which is a really cute best friends thing, Lena supposes. She is surprised to find that she genuinely is not jealous- these people really are Kara’s friends, nothing more, and they seem to love each other. Sam and Nia click quickly, both making snarky jokes and soon enough Sam has leaned in close so that they can gossip quietly- “and without judgement!” Nia has assured the table. Kara only laughs.

James is a calming presence where Winn is dorky and Nia sarcastic, and with Kara’s sweetness they fit together perfectly. Every time Lena has a little side conversation with one of Kara’s friends she feels Kara looking on, smiling brightly, looking almost proud. Which is maybe a bit weird, but Lena brushes it off.

When lunch is over she is surprised to admit that it’s been fun, she’s had fun hanging out with Kara’s odd little group. Winn demands Lena and Sam join them again- “we need to do this more often, I’ve honestly never seen Nia meet her match like she has with Sam. Not in a bad way. Or like, a weird way. Or romantic, god no, I just mean… well.”

It’s astonishing, because Winn’s rambling is just like Kara’s and in that vein she can’t find it in her to describe it as annoying because it’s not, it’s endearing.

Kara and Lena have math together the next period, so they wander off together to a chorus of “bye” and to Sam’s off-putting winks. (She looks like she’s blinking something out of her eye, and luckily no one seems to catch on. Lena has to cover her mouth to smother her laughter when James asks her if she’s alright.)

Kara’s kind of gazing at Lena as they walk, and Lena realizes she wants her opinion. “Kara, they’re so great,” she says, and she’s actually smiling, and Kara lights up instantly.

“Oh, I know, right? I’ve known Winn the longest, but all of them are just the absolute greatest people. And you haven’t even met Lucy, or Barney, and I guess you barely know Alex! Also from Sandville High, a few towns over? You’ve got to meet Imra and Barry and oh, I think you’d love his friend Cisco.”

Lena only smiles.

--

That Friday, Kara comes over with an armful of chip bags. “One of them is for Lex,” she announces diplomatically, and Lex eagerly snatches a sour cream and onion pack from her arms, calling his thank you’s out behind him. Kara laughs.

“And the rest,” she announces, placing three bags in Lena’s arms so that she can adjust her position, “are for us.”

“I don’t think it’s humanly possible for us to eat that many chips.”

“Oh, you don’t know what you’re getting into, Luthor.”

Lena follows Kara up the stairs, and she really can’t help the shiver that passes through her at the use of her last name.

Kara insists that they watch a scary movie- “Halloween is tomorrow, Lena, show your spirit!”- and decides upon Child’s Play. Lena is pretty sure she doesn’t actually understand what she’s gotten herself into because the second the Chucky doll moves for the first time Kara throws her bag of chips down on the floor.

“What the heck was that?”

“Chucky, Kara!”

“Who?”

“Oh, you really are in for a shock.”

Kara covers her eyes at odd times and holds Lena’s arm through the whole movie (which Lena greatly appreciates), and when it’s over she flops over backwards and sighs.

“Lena, I can’t believe I watched that for you.”

“What do you mean, you’re the one who wanted to watch it!”

“Yeah, but shh! I have to blame it on you.”

“You dork,” Lena says affectionately, tossing a crumpled chip wrapper onto Kara’s stomach. It’s not even heavy, but Kara lets out a little “oof” and then doubles over on her side laughing. Lena starts to laugh too, and pretty soon Kara can barely breathe as she uncurls herself to try to speak, fails, and then lapses back into hysterics. Finally she calms herself before promptly hiccuping and turning bright red. Lena can’t control her laughter and she falls off the bed, which only adds to it, and soon they’re curled together on the floor practically howling.

Finally they stop laughing, and Lex knocks sharply on Lena’s door to signify that dinner is ready.

“We’re good!” they call back in unison.

“You say that, but I swear if you even mention that you’re hungry later tonight…”

“We won’t, Lex, we ate six bags of chips!” Lena groans, throwing a shoe at her door, and Kara giggles again.

“No, stop laughing,” Lena smiles, “we can’t do that again. I almost suffocated.”

“By the way,” Kara says, rising to her feet to go and play with the figurines on Lena’s shelf, “what are you doing for Halloween?”

Lena halts her answer for a moment because Kara is standing in her room like it’s nothing, playing with her little figurines and it’s only been a few weeks, but somehow they feel so comfortable together.

Lena really does feel a pang. Kara is the definition of the things she loves, perfection personified, and all that, and Lena starts to realize that spending time with Kara is so, so much better than anything else. She’d dedicate her days to this. She’d rather draw her last breath with Kara by her side than never see her again, and she knows it sounds a bit dramatic. But sometimes, she thinks, love is just like that.

“I’m handing out candy. It’s kind of lame, I know, but me and Lex dress up and pass it out from our front door to all the kids. It can be kind of fun. And sometimes my mother even helps. What are you doing?”

Kara looks a little wistful. “I’m going to a party,” she says glumly.

“But that’s fun!”

“I’d rather pass out candy to kids!”

“Who are you going with?”

“Mike.”

“Oh, really?”

The distaste must show on Lena’s face because Kara lets out a little air in a laugh. “Okay, well, he asked me like three times and I felt kind of bad saying no, and, I don’t know. He can be kind of sweet?”

“You know you can just say no.”

“I’m not an anti-drug campaign.”

“Kara, that was so dumb,” Lena smiles, “but seriously, you could just say you don’t want to go.”

“Yeah, I know, but… well, remember when we first started really hanging out and you said you’re not good with confrontation?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not great with it, either.” In that moment, Kara looks so vulnerable, so small, and Lena just wants to wrap her up in a blanket and keep her safe and wait until she smiles again. She’s never seen Kara like this before.

She continues. “I don’t know, I just really don’t like when people don’t like me. Which sounds so selfish, I know, but not like that. It’s more that I want to be my best for them all the time, and if I reject Mike he’ll just feel bad, and I don’t know. I don’t want him to be disappointed. He’s always been nice to me.”

“It doesn’t sound selfish.” Lena replies, taking Kara’s hand gingerly. She feels Kara drop along her side, and then she starts to shake. Kara is crying, sad crying, not Incredibles crying.

“I should like him, it makes sense for me to like him and I just- I just…” she gasps for breath and Lena wraps her arm around Kara’s shoulders, a bit stunned.

“Hey, hey, Kar. Kara, listen. It’s gonna be okay.” She’s not completely sure what she’s assuring Kara of but she pets her arm soothingly, sits quietly until she feels Kara’s shaking form slow down. She presses a kiss to Kara’s hair softly and feels Kara freeze. Shit.

But then it’s over, and Kara is apologizing, for some strange reason, and Lena is telling her not to, and then Kara’s grabbing her stuff and telling her to enjoy her Halloween.

“Pass out a lot of candy for me, Luthor.”

“Drink a Smirnoff Ice for me, Danvers.”

They smile at each other quickly, and then Kara is gone.

(The next day, Lena thinks of Kara every time she drops an Almond Joy into a waiting basket and wonders if maybe Mike can get over his own entitled ass and see Kara for the treasure she is. Maybe he’ll see what he has and hang onto it. Lena wishes she could.)

--

That November is one of the worst of Lena’s life.

When Mike asked out Kara at the Halloween party, she’d said yes, according to Sam, who got her information from Nia (who did not seem very happy about it, Sam had said as a hopeful note in a bad song).

It’s November, and they’re dating. It’s the end of November, and Kara still comes to Lena’s house every week, but she talks about Mike now and it hurts Lena a little bit more every time.

Sam says that Kara’s eyes don’t look as happy as the smile her mouth curls itself into. Secretly, Lena agrees, but Kara seems happy and it is so not an okay thing for a friend to make a friend unhappy like that.

It’s the end of November when Kara comes into Lena’s room crying on a Wednesday, so Lena is justified in her shock. She can barely make out the words Kara’s saying until she can.

“Lena, I’m- I’m bi.” She says it so tentatively, like a little whisper, and Lena wants to spin her around to celebrate the fact that Kara! You just came out! But Kara is shaking and so she doesn’t and then Kara almost stops her heart.

“Are you okay with it? I mean, I get it if you aren’t, I’m really sorry, I don’t know…”

Lena is scrambling around her room, opening drawers.

“Lena, I don’t know what you're doing. If you want me to leave, though, I can…”

But then Lena spins around holding what she’d been looking for- a little rainbow flag, which she waves back and forth. Kara pauses.

“You are too?”

“I’m gay, yeah.”

“Oh my god, same!”

“We’re gay!”

“We’re gay.”

And then Kara is hugging her and Lena’s pressing the rainbow flag into Kara’s hand and telling her to keep it- “I swear, Kara, because Lex has about six hundred that he bought when I told him because he’s a dork of an ally.”

“Okay,” Kara smiles. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Yeah, damn, Danvers, you thought I was some kind of homophobe?”

Then they’re both giggling, and neither of them brings up Mike.

But the elephant in the room gets harder and harder to miss as he slides up to Kara’s desk during classes and sits with her at lunch. (None of Kara’s friends look particularly happy about this development.)

“Lena, you’ve got to tell her,” Sam says, but Lena shakes her head once, sharply, and she doesn’t bring it up again.

It’s December, the week before winter break, and Kara comes in wearing a ridiculous Hanukkah sweater (it truly is ridiculous, complete with blue trim and a star of David on the back).

It’s that same day that Mike announces that he’s in love with Kara in front of their entire history class. There are some gasps, and a very pointed glare at Mike from Lucy Lane, but Kara just stops what she’s doing and stares up at him quietly. The glowing menorah on her chest blinks.

Lena goes to the bathroom.

Which is to say that she sits on the tiled floor and cries.

She is so not that person. She would never even consider making Kara unhappy, because how could she? Loving someone means you want to make them happy all the time, and that’s all Lena wants to do. She’s been loving Kara for months, loving her with fairy lights and gummy worms and pride flags. She’s compromised for her and hugged her and cried with her.

She doesn’t need compensation. That is the last thing she’d do. Kara doesn’t owe her anything for all of it, and she will keep on doing it all, because she was Kara fucking Danvers and she glowed brighter than the sun.

It was just so hard.

She hears a door swing open. “Lena?”

It’s Kara, and Lena cannot pretend she isn’t there.

“It’s fine, Kara. You can go.”

“I’m not going.” Lena can basically see Kara’s jaw jutting out, her hands on her hips. She knows Kara is stubborn, she loves her for it, but god damn.

“I’m fine, really.”

“I know you’re crying. Why?”

“I’m just overwhelmed.” It’s a lie and they both know it, but Kara doesn’t question it because she’s actually probably an angel. Instead she hums, sitting down on the tile and leaning back against Lena’s stall door.

“You know, I just broke up with Mike.”

“You did what?”

“I broke up with him.”

“In front of everyone?”

“No, it was tasteful.”

“But just now.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Kara hesitates, then says slowly, “I realized it was almost our two month anniversary and once Alex told me never to date someone I didn’t like for more than two months. So I broke us up.”

“Are you… okay?”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a moment.

“You know, Lena, you’re one of my best friends.”

Lena smiles despite herself. “You’re one of mine, too.”

“I know Mike told you he was going to say he loved me.”

This was true. He’d texted Lena the other night. It was, to say the least, passive aggressive.

“That is… true. I’m sorry.”

“You know,” Kara says slowly, “right before Halloween I told you I hung out with him because he’s nice to me. Remember?”

Lena nods, and although Kara can’t see her, she seems mollified and continues. “Well, he’s not nice to you.”

“What?”

“He isn’t nice to you, and you matter too much to me for that shit.”

Lena laughs, surprised. “Kara, you swore!”

“I did.”

Lena bites her lip. “Kara?”

But she’s cut off abruptly. “Do you want to come do Hanukkah with my family tonight?”

Lena unlocks the door and Kara spins around so they’re face to face. Lena smiles slowly.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. But I don’t have a Hanukkah sweater, do I need one?”

Kara looks surprised at the joke, but then she bursts into giggles. “Shut up, Luthor,” she responds, smiling.

Lena is so, so in love with this girl. It just might kill her.

--

Lena’s had dinner with the Danvers family a few times since September. Namely, every time Lex was busy, Kara invited her over because she said it was “horrible” to have to eat dinner alone. On a few occasions Lex had been invited too, which made for interesting evenings.

But Lena’s never done Hanukkah before, and she tries not to have a lingering pang of anxiety. She’s pretty comfortable with Kara’s family, but Kara had paused and looked at her and something had changed. The air had shifted.

The lingering feeling was much easier to ignore inside Kara’s home, however. She was well fed with latkes and donuts, and Eliza even let her light the candles which Kara insisted was very special. “It’s the first night, Lena. Me and Alex used to have actual brawls over who lit the first night candles.”

But Lena does it, and they eat and there’s so much excitement in the air and it’s so much better than Luthor family Christmas, which she invites the Danverses to. “We have a big party at our house, and it’s awful, but there’s hors d'oeuvres and alcohol.”

“We will be there,” Jeremiah assures her and Kara laughs lightly.

The candles burn low by about nine o’clock, by which time Eliza and Jeremiah have wandered off to the back porch together. She and Kara are alone.

“Lena?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s really nice having you here. Thank you.”

“Of course I’d come, Kara.”

“Well, yeah, for that, but also… I don’t know. For tutoring me. For all the movies. For being such a good friend.”

Lena’s about to say of course, she’s about to protest, but instead she just sighs and smiles. It’s a real smile, and at this point, she’s pretty sure Kara knows what it means. She hopes.

“Hey, you know the park down the street?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Do you want to walk there? I need to get out of the house, I had, like, four donuts.”

Lena laughs and follows her out the door. It’s a short walk, and from the base of the hill at the park they can see both their houses, looming softly in the distance. It’s been a hell of a year since that white house got filled with people. It’s been a hell of a life, really, on this street.

They sit down on a park bench together and Lena can hear Kara’s breathing and crickets and tree branches rustling. It’s dark, but there’s a faint glow behind the trees. Kara looks ethereal again.

“Do you remember,” Kara interrupts her silent admiration, “when we first got assigned to be partners for that stupid Lexington and Concord project?”

“It was not stupid, Kara,” Lena laughs, “but yeah. Why?”

“Remember when Mike wanted me to switch partners to be with him?”

“I’m really glad you didn’t.”

“Me too. But remember you said you didn’t think he liked you and I was really surprised?”

“I think a more accurate description would be that you yelled ‘What?!’ in the middle of a silent history class.”

Kara giggles. Lena wishes she could bottle that sound up and drink it whenever she was feeling low.

“That may be true, yes. But I never told you why I was so surprised.”

“Why were you so surprised, Kara?” Lena plays along.

“It didn’t make sense to me. Because you said he didn’t like you, and I just… I didn’t understand how anyone could… not.”

Lena looks over then, and Kara is gazing at her with shiny eyes and the sweetest expression and Lena feels butterflies pound into her stomach.

“Lena?”

“Kara?”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

And then Lena leans forward and she sees a tiny little smile flit across Kara’s face and this girl. This girl is going to be the death of her.

She kisses Kara and it feels like living again. Or maybe living for the first time, Lena doesn’t know, but she does know that her heart is skipping beats and her stomach is flipping and Kara makes a little gasping noise into her lips and oh. She cups Kara’s face and pulls her closer, and their lips slip together again and it’s so perfect, and Lena’s only ever kissed her friends on dares and it had always been stilted and funny but this is heavenly. She never wants it to stop.

Of course it does, eventually, because Kara’s lips are so soft and Lena just has to lean back and take Kara by the shoulders and look her straight into her ocean blue eyes- if the ocean was richer, of course, because no sea could compare to Kara- and say, “I’m in love with you, too.”

And Kara beams. And it’s fucking blinding. And Lena’s pretty sure she’s beaming back because Kara suddenly whips out her phone and takes a picture of them together, curled up on this bench, beaming. Lena thinks she might have tears in her eyes.

“What was that for?” she laughs breathlessly.

“The picture or the kiss? Because the kiss I thought was pretty obvious.” Kara smirks.

“The picture, dumbass,” Lena smiles.

“For my wall.”

She says it so innocently and then it hits Lena that oh, this is love, this is perfect. This is love.

So she pulls out a lipstick from her bag and lines it on and then grabs Kara’s cheek and presses her lips to it like a stamp. Kara actually blushes, which only makes Lena blush, and then she stops. “There,” she says, “get a picture of that. Proof that we kissed.”

Kara giggles. “They’re both going on my wall.”

“Mine too, obviously,” Lena smiles across at her. She can’t remember the last time she’s felt this happy. She can’t remember if she’s ever felt this happy. Kara Danvers is next to her, sunshine and blue eyes and this is her girl. This is the girl she loves.

“Wait, oh my gosh, let’s send them to everyone,” Kara says, smiling.

“What?”

“Well, I mean, Winn and James and Nia and everybody know I’ve been in love with you since, like, tenth grade.”

“Wait, tenth grade? Kara, me too.”

“What? Crazy! Does Sam know?”

Lena raises an eyebrow and Kara laughs. “So that’s a yes.”

A minute later, Lena watches Kara hit send on both pictures to a large group chat. Then she sets down her phone.

Lena can hear the ringing and buzzing as her friends, she assumes, lose their minds, but she can’t bring herself to care. She’s too wrapped up in Kara Danvers, and she doesn’t think she’s ever letting go.